


To Hunger Alone

by kingfisherBlues



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: An American writes about English stuff., Cooking Lessons, Fluff, In that the American author is very much unaware of most English things., M/M, POV Original Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-23 17:27:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19706071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingfisherBlues/pseuds/kingfisherBlues
Summary: Aziraphale, with his enemy-companion Crowley, has dined at the finest of establishments in the most fashionable cities for millennia, served by obsequious chefs who know a true professional eater when they see one. He is, in fact, the epitome of a gourmand. But despite these many years of learning the difference between anise and licorice on a single taste, he can't peel an onion or fry an egg without the risk of severe bodily harm.Who ever heard of a gourmand that couldn't cook?





	To Hunger Alone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [threehornedsoul (Derppool)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Derppool/gifts).



> The show did come out recently, which resparked my interest in writing (ironically), but my first love was the book itself. As such, this story is a combination from both of those sources. It is not a currently modern tale.

Charlie Friend liked cooking.  


That was a vast understatement, but he could be discreet.  


Charlie liked cooking enough that he had given up a miserable position as a sous chef in one of those miserable high end restaurants that spawned more miserable employees in order to pursue his dreams in a different direction. Teaching cooking wasn’t what he had imagined in his twenties, but his thirties were enjoying it immensely. Well. His late thirties. He did have a stint of getting all the misery out before taking up the job of teaching people the right way of holding a knife, but that was behind him, and this was now.  


Now, Charlie had his own apartment - or ‘flat’ as his English neighbors insisted on calling it - and had a tidy space just downstairs set up so that many people could cook the same meal together. The process was something that his boyfriend teasingly called ‘intimate sessions’, but really, they would be groups of maybe ten to fifteen people, eager to learn how to make food for themselves and sometimes loved ones.  


The sessions with loved ones were difficult on occasion. Couples liked to moon or bicker in equal measure, so Charlie had learned how to be diplomatic in order to get everything moving along. When he first started the enterprise, he worked five days a week, with one in the morning and one in the evening. He had since learned to give Couple’s Learning their own day.  


There were inevitably problems.  


That Friday, Charlie had a mix of regulars and new people, amounting to four couples. It was a little low, but it allowed him to pay more attention to the complete novices. He had to pretend not to know Mr. Caldwell - who had been attending single sessions sporadically in order to impress his wife on their first ‘cooking date’ - and there was another lone American who kept calling him “Chuck”, but it was going well.  


No one was bleeding. No one was dying. No one was sneezing onto their bread. And they were nearly ready to start on the pasta. Excellent.  


“Mr. Friend,” called out one of his new students. “My dough isn’t moving.”  


Charlie turned from complimenting Ana and Beatrice’s kneading to see Mr. Fell standing at his section of the counter island, hands covered in dough, looking to him beseechingly for help. The rest of the bread was spread horribly over the stainless steel surface. It would take ages to clean up properly, he could see at a glance. And he no longer had minions for that sort of work. It was his alone.  


He had to wonder, not for the first time, why he didn't hire people to help in his private business. He remembered his last working partner and hastily forgot his wondering.  


Pulling on his reserve of patience from years of getting new line chefs to understand the most information in the shortest amount of words, Charlie went to see what the problem was.  


Mr. Fell watched him with an amount of concern that felt worryingly sincere. Everything he had done so far seemed sincere, from his enthusiastic hellos at the beginning of the lesson to his determined attention to every word Charlie had said since. He had the feeling that the fellow was mentally taking notes about every move, but his actions indicated that he wasn’t actually following those notes, but just putting them on the shelf for an undetermined ‘later’.  


“There isn’t enough flour in the dough,” Charlie summated shortly, examining the crime scene. “And you need to scatter flour across any surface before kneading. It seems that part was missed.”  


“Ah, of course,” Mr. Fell said, cheerful now he had a diagnosis, picking at scraps stuck fast to his fingers. “It keeps the rest from staying still, does it?”  


“Better to think of it as allowing the dough to move how you want it to,” he explained further. The dough wasn’t ‘staying still’ so much as plastered across the counter. He glanced up at Mr. Fell’s companion for the evening. “Would you like to pitch in?” he suggested mildly.  


Mr. Fell’s companion shook his head, red hair staying stylishly in place by dint of strong pomade, despite its length. He was wearing sunglasses and hadn’t taken off his suit jacket as others did, or introduced himself at the beginning. In fact, he hadn’t participated at all, instead choosing to lurk behind his shorter friend with a faint aura of disapproval for the entire process. That left Mr. Fell to pick up the slack.  


Charlie didn’t approve. He had dealt with _those_ people in couples before. They were usually straight men, but they all held the act of cooking in contempt. It was as though they were personally offended by the idea of actually having to _make_ their own food, instead of it magically appearing when they were hungry.  


Men like that were why Charlie said he liked _cooking_ , and not the culinary arts.  


“Come now, my dear, it’s great fun!” said Mr. Fell to his companion. Somewhere between the shift of Charlie’s attention, he had managed to get his hands entirely free of dough; he stood with shoulders back, neatening his rolled up shirt sleeves. Getting him to take off his strange blazer-jacket-thing had been a trial, but he had eventually yielded when Charlie had offered an apron to cover his oddly formal clothes.  


“Looks messy,” the man said dismissively with a slight lisp. He hunched his shoulders, hands thrust firmly into his pockets with the slouching nonchalant attitude of someone trying very hard to be casual.  


“Just a tad, but that’s easily fixed,” Mr. Fell insisted, scattering flour.  


“A bit too much there, Mr. Fell,” Charlie interjected at the great rise of white powder. He had grabbed an entire handful.  


“Chuck, can I add anything cool to this, or will it be just bread?” said the American guy. His girlfriend Sara whacked him on the arm. “What? Bread is boring.”  


“It’s not that we’re making _just_ bread,” said Charlie, turning his attention, ready to make The Speech again. He didn't hate the speech, but he was getting close. “We’re learning the basics, so as to apply these skills to more complicated dishes-”  


“Like what? Mac and cheese?” the man said before he could go further. His girlfriend whacked at him again. “Hey!”  


“Please refrain from striking your fellow chefs,” Charlie admonished her. It looked like she was joking, but he still didn’t like it.  


“It’s fine, I like it rough,” said the American.  


“Dave!” she protested over the silent sound of English confusion. Charlie could hear it clear as day after six years of living in the country. He resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. That would only get flour on his face.  


“What? It's true,” the American said, grinning broadly with a waggle of his eyebrows. He seemed to relish Mr. Caldwell’s look of bemusement, even as Mrs. Caldwell blushed red.  


Ana and Beatrice exchanged mutual looks of exasperation at the indiscretion. The cooking lessons were vetted to make sure that no one was allowed in that would make a fuss, but there were different ways to be annoying.  


“You still shouldn't say it,” said Sara. “We're in London, for Christ's sake.”  


“Oh, missionaries, are you?” piped up Mr. Fell's companion. He was baring his teeth in what might be a smile, but really seemed to be an excuse to be sharp.  


“Don't start with that, you know perfectly well they aren't,” muttered Mr. Fell, gathering freshly floured dough into an ugly ball.  


Sara frowned at his companion. “Yeah, we super aren’t.”  


“Then why do anything for the sake of the ol’ JC? Seems a bit much to go all the way to England for Him, if you're not missionaries,” he rattled off, still baring that strange smile.  


The American woman opened her mouth to reply, but Mr. Fell interrupted by elbowing his friend and loudly calling attention to his bread. He had put a smiley face on it.  


Charlie wished that the man had introduced himself, but it felt weird to ask at this point. At least Mr. Fell had seemed to feel the impending food fight. He really did not need another one.  


“Let's get back to the task at hand, shall we?” he said, tapping on a table for attention. “Next we'll leave the dough to rise so that we can start on our noodles…”  


As they followed his instructions and his examples at the head of the room, Charlie checked on his students in rotation, walking up and down the channel allowed to him by the twin rows of steel counters. He found himself returning to Mr. Fell and his companion more than others, called by his name and a soft sound of 'oh, no' in equal measure.  


His companion still refused to participate, instead choosing to watch over Mr. Fell’s shoulder. He seemed to distrust every action and hid whenever the students were instructed to pick up a new tool or ingredient. Mincing garlic caused him to wince. He paled as they blanched tomatoes. Charlie looked away to help Beatrice with the onions, and when he looked back, the man had pulled his jacket over his head and covered his face with the lapels.  


It seemed over dramatic, to put it lightly.  


Of course, that could have just been because of who he was with. It hurt to watch Mr. Fell work. He had even tried to use a vegetable peeler on his onions. Charlie hadn't ever considered that as a thing to correct his students on. It was either innovative or completely absurd. 

“You got tomato sauce in your hair, angel,” the man grunted at one point.  


“Oh, do I?” he had said, reaching up to his white-blonde curls and instantly adding more. The front of his apron, tied firmly over threadbare slacks and well-worn vest, was splattered with the gore of Charlie's favorite fruit-veggie. What bubbled on the portable burner - a set for each couple, just enough for a shared meal - didn't resemble a sauce so much as sullen paint. The bad kind, with lead in it, that kids wouldn’t eat for the salt but would poison the ground it fell on.  


At least his nameless friend helped him get the sauce out.  


Mr. Fell, it seemed, was utterly helpless.  


Bless his heart, Charlie thought silently. It was a particular phrase he reserved only for the internal thoughts of a tried teacher, mostly because the English didn't quite seem to understand the depth of feeling behind it. With it, he was blessing not only Mr. Fell’s incompetence, but that his companion only spoke in short spurts, each more withering than the last.  


Charlie did chide him for the discouragement and received a full body glare for his trouble. The man had to make up for his fashion choices somehow, it seemed, since a regular glare wouldn't have gone beyond the shades.  


“We could have gone to the Ritz!” said the darkly bespectacled man to Mr. Fell, shoulders resting somewhere near his ears in his passion, dramatically clawed hands raised. “We could have gone _anywhere_. Instead, I have to watch you make a fool of yourself!”  


“They don’t let you ‘dice’ mushrooms at the Ritz,” countered Mr. Fell smoothly, not looking up from where he was performing the task. Ana, closest to him, was watching with the horrified fascination of a bystander to a car crash. He kept barely nicking his fingers, just enough to not draw blood. Yet. And every time he was corrected, he went right back to the nearly nicking position.  


Charlie was getting a headache.  


He was thankful, towards the end, that it was a light evening. Mr. Caldwell had done his part of the meal with skill, which delighted Mrs. Caldwell to no end. Ana was more patient with the pasta than Beatrice, but both women had worked well together, even as they rightfully used the excuse of cooking to flirt with one another. The Americans only seemed to get in each other's way, but they had managed to finish. Each seemed prouder than was warranted, but they _had_ gone out for an unusual date while vacationing. Charlie could see the appeal, even if he didn't understand their squabbling.  


Mr. Fell's meal - and it was his alone, since his companion helped not at all - was basically inedible.  


But he watched Charlie taste it with such hope in his limpid eyes. He didn't want to crush that tiny green sprig of good intentions.  


“Some improvements could be made,” he finally allowed once his tongue stopped rebelling. He hadn’t seen an excessive amount of salt added to the dish, but it must have happened at some point. “It's a good first effort, though. The bread is… okay.”  


It was mostly okay. The smiley face hadn't survived baking and looked decidedly grumpy about the entire experience, but it was _okay_. It could be eaten, if nothing else was in the pantry and you didn’t have to go to work the next day.  


Mr. Fell beamed at him. He looked anywhere between thirty or sixty, but his smile brought that age to ‘inexorably precious’.  


Charlie was too young to feel so old in the face of such optimism.  


“What did I tell you? It's worth the trials of learning a new skill,” Mr. Fell said pointedly to the air, untying his apron to fold it neatly and place it on the counter. “Even if it does not go as expected all the time.”  


“We could have bought a better meal in less time than this took,” grumbled his friend. He dipped a finger in the still very hot pasta sauce and tasted it without a flinch.  


He slowly stuck out his tongue.  


“Angel,” he mumbled, tongue still out. There was something off about it, but it wouldn't stay in Charlie's head. “This is terrible.”  


Mr. Fell looked crestfallen. He clearly cared a lot about the man's opinion. And here he was, wielding it wildly without a single kind word.  


“Improvements could be made,” said Charlie, doing his best to not-glare at the black glass covering the man's eyes. “And this was the first meal you've ever cooked, right?”  


“Yes,” answered Mr. Fell, brightening at the generous use of the word ‘meal’. “At least properly, with the stewing and dicing and everything.”  


Charlie looked around at his other students, who were plating their efforts to take to the dining area. It was part of every session he taught and usually the most enjoyable, if only because it brought a treasured sense of companionship to their hard work. Even Mr. Caldwell was still showing off for his wife, adding unnecessary bits of garnish to the dish, and it took only a few weeks for him to be so confident.  


He _did_ have regular students, and there _was_ improvement over time. And, he reasoned to himself, a man so eager couldn't help but improve.  


It wouldn’t hurt to be a little encouraging.  


“You can come as many times as you like, you know,” Charlie offered to him, giving his best teacher’s smile. “I try to rotate the menu frequently, so there's always something new to learn. There's even a schedule, if you'd like to see it.”  


Mr. Fell clapped his hands together in excitement. His companion groaned.  


“I'd be delighted!” he exclaimed.  


“Of course you would be,” his friend complained.  


Charlie couldn't help it. He finally frowned at the man.  


“You don't have to come,” he pointed out. He didn’t like lurkers at the best of times, and this fellow struck him as a lurker of the first order. “I'd rather my students be willing when they enter my kitchen.”  


The man scowled. It was impressive, with its twists and turns and sheer feeling, but Charlie had grown up to be a gay man in the American South. This scowl didn't have a tithe on that sort of disdain.  


Charlie just frowned back, stern and disapproving.  


“I'm not your student,” the man finally scoffed, letting go of the brief frowning struggle. “And I'm not here to learn. Only to keep this one from setting everything on fire.”  


“I _won't_ -” Mr. Fell immediately began protesting.  


The man reached out and slowly pulled the apron away from the still switched-on burner, not looking away from his friend the entire time. A bit of the fabric smoldered.  


Charlie smothered it with a damp surface rag and his own calloused hands.  


Mr. Fell, meek and blushing, turned off the burner.  


He ended up sharing what he had cooked for the lesson with Mr. Fell and his friend. They did seem to appreciate that. And Charlie always made enough to cover any mistakes. It couldn’t hurt to share.

*******

When Charlie saw Mr. Fell again, he was pleasantly surprised. It had been long enough that he supposed the man had given up, which would have been disappointing. Even if he had nearly taken off his fingers with every slice of the knife, he had been really cheerful about it. That couldn’t be said of a lot of novices that Charlie ended up teaching. It was really encouraging, especially after the morning he had had.  


His companion - friend, perhaps, but they shadowed each other in a familiar way - was with Mr. Fell again, which was less pleasant. He was still wearing sunglasses, even though it was an overcast evening.  


Charlie gave them both the same smile anyway.  


“Good to see you again, sir,” he said to the younger-older man. He turned his greeting to the companion. “And you as well. Will we get a name this time?”  


“No,” he said curtly.  


“His name is Crowley,” Mr. Fell said.  


“Hey!”  


“He was afraid you would call on him to do some culinary tasks,” Mr. Fell continued, taking Charlie’s arm in order to walk them both to the kitchen. “So he didn’t want to introduce himself. But _I_ wanted to come, so here we are!”  


Startled, Charlie went along with the motion. It felt old-fashioned more than over-familiar, like how his grandmother used to take his arm on walks. At least, before she stopped acknowledging him at all.  


“Well, he’s already said he’s not my student, so I reckon I can suffer his non-participation,” said Charlie. He could sense Mr. Crowley following them, sauntering along as though he didn’t care about being dismissed.  


He knew that feeling. Maybe partner was closer to accurate.  


“It’s for the best,” sighed Mr. Fell. “He doesn’t have the same appreciation for the finer arts.”  


Mr. Crowley made an odd noise that was close to indignation, but sounded more like a stove-top kettle. Charlie deliberately did not laugh.  


Today’s lesson was coconut chicken curry, with a group of eleven people that looked to him with differing amounts of trepidation. The general goal that Charlie tried to maintain was time management in cooking, as a lot of people tended to be intimidated by juggling all the different parts of making a meal. The sooner he could get them on board with the idea of doing what was needed rather than chasing a single goal to the end, the better. It would help them later, hopefully, when they tried the same things at home.  


To that end, he started them on rice - he didn’t believe in rice cookers, a hold over from his Georgia living - and prepping the various delicious bits that would be put in the pot before their meat. The lemongrass caused a bit of hilarity in the room. Charlie had to go around the students and show them that yes, it did take that much force to cut through a good, fresh stalk, don’t be afraid to do it, just keep your fingers clear and have at it.  


His nose noted the familiar smell of burned rice before his brain did.  


“I thought it would help it go faster,” Mr. Fell explained once Charlie had turned off his burner and taken the burned rice to the large sink. He had followed him across the room, his friend Mr. Crowley right behind him, still pretending to not care about what was happening. It was a ridiculous train of further upset. “If I just nudged the heat up, just a tad.”  


“I told you it wouldn’t work,” Mr. Crowley whispered. Mr. Fell shot him a dirty look.  


“Well, you certainly didn’t _stop_ me.”  


“That’s not _my_ job, is it, then?”  


“It’s a good lesson to learn,” said Charlie over them both, loud enough that everyone in the room could hear. “When we set things to a certain temperature for a certain period of time, that is to make sure everything cooks through _properly_. If we try to rush or cut corners, it can lead to wasting more time than what we wanted to save.”  


He met the eyes of each person in the room as he spoke. Two people carefully turned down the temperature of their burners to what he had specified earlier.  


Mr. Caldwell, back for more cooking tips, gave him a double thumbs up.  


The lesson progressed to sauteing veggies and spices, cooking the chicken, adding stock, and setting it all to simmer so that they could deal with cilantro and juicing lemons. The good sized group made things a little harder for Charlie today, as he was called again and again to help Mr. Fell. He had to remind him that cutting ingredients did not mean whacking blindly with the knife, and to please not touch his face after touching literally anything else. Ginger in the eye was not a pleasant sensation and Charlie didn't want to have to push another man's head under the nearby sink faucet.  


He made a mental note to put another eye washing station on the other side of the room, just in case. It couldn’t hurt his safety rating to have _more_ precautions, could it?  


Even more bafflingly - perhaps due to his earlier mistake - Mr. Fell was now afraid to put the temperature of the burner to anything higher than ‘an Englishman’s definition of warm’. Mr. Crowley watched with arms crossed tight as Charlie corrected it, lips pursed with bitten back words. He looked like he ached to speak.  


Well, he wasn’t the student, so Charlie could ignore him. It was Mr. Fell that was here to learn.  


“Y’all are gonna get some kind of salmonella if you don’t let it get even a little hot,” Charlie chided him as gently as he knew how. The word choice probably didn’t help. He did his best to tone down the accent in the day to day, but this day was stressful. It had _started_ stressful and it didn’t look like it was going to stop any time soon.  


But that wasn’t an excuse. He took a deep breath.  


“Hey, you’re new at this,” he said, trying to look like he was patting Mr. Fell’s back without actually moving. “There’s a lot of stuff that goes with cooking that people might learn early on, might not. You just happen to be learning it all now. You’ll get there, sir.”  


Mr. Fell only nodded, contemplating his work area with a pinched pensiveness reserved for period dramas. He didn’t seem to be encouraged.  


Time for the big guns.  


Charlie wiped his hands clean on a towel he kept tucked into his apron pocket for just that purpose and, smiling his best smile, actually patted Mr. Fell on the shoulder.  


“Hey,” he said softly. “You’ll get there.”  


“Thank you,” Mr. Fell said, inclining his head. He seemed stuck in the drama, as his thanks was graver than Charlie would have anticipated, but he still nodded in acceptance of it.  


He stepped away. Behind him, he heard Mr. Crowley whisper, “I’ll let you know if the temperature is wrong, all right?”  


Charlie bent to attend to another student and chased away his desire to smile.  


At least this time, the results weren’t _totally_ inedible.  


“A bit too much curry paste,” said Charlie, tears running down his face after the taste test. Some sparkle of premonition had him saving Mr. Fell’s work for last, and it had served him well. He drank from a nearly empty jug of milk, not bothering with a glass. He would just have to remember to take it up to his apartment/flat instead of leaving it in the big kitchen fridge.  


“Well, it _is_ a curry,” sniped Mr. Crowley. He had migrated from watching over Mr. Fell’s shoulder to sitting on the counter, kicking at the air idly. “Isn’t there supposed to be a lot in there?”  


“That’s what I thought,” agreed Mr. Fell, looking at Charlie with a small amount of suspicion.  


“Too much curry paste can overwhelm the other flavours,” he explained, between swigs of milk. He had never tried drinking milk after eating something spicy. He had thought spice was built into his _bones_. “We had garlic, onion, lemongrass, and ginger in there. Could you taste any of it?”  


“Oh, no, of course not,” Mr. Fell said promptly, holding a hand to his chest. “It wasn’t finished. I couldn’t try it until it was finished!”  


Charlie did not close his eyes to give himself strength, but he did bless Mr. Fell’s heart with the full force of a congregation of professional blessers.  


At least the man’s earnestness was better than morning arguments.  


“Please don’t sit on the counter,” he finally said to Mr. Crowley. He rolled his entire head, but slipped down when Mr. Fell gave him a pointed look. Charlie was secretly pleased to see that he had gotten schmutz on the back of his pants. Trousers. In England they were trousers. He kept forgetting not to notice people’s pants. Those were private.  


“Next time,” he said to Mr. Fell, bringing himself to the task at hand, “let’s try a few taste tests between stages. Just to make sure things are progressing well.”  


“If you say it’s all right,” said Mr. Fell doubtfully.  


Mr. Crowley tried sticking his finger in the pot in order to taste it, caught a whiff of spice, and backed off, coughing into his jacket sleeve. It was too strong even for him.  


“Mr. Friend?” said one of the newer students. She was barely twenty and looked up at him like a deer in the headlights, but she asked good questions while they worked. “What do we do now?”  


“We’re going to eat our work,” he answered, twisting the cap on the milk jug. He looked around the room to find everyone waiting and eager. It was the first time some of them had ever cooked something more complicated than boxed macaroni. They had done well. “I’ll get the dishes.”  


“I’m already on it, laddie!” called out Mr. Caldwell, opening the dishes cabinet. He was really enjoying retirement with this new hobby.  


Charlie shared what he had made with Mr. Fell and Crowley again. If they came back, he suspected that he would just have to make sure his example dishes were large. 

*******

The third time Mr. Fell showed up for lessons, Charlie nearly thought about turning him away.  


Charlie knew full well that he was only able to carve the space he had in London because of his family’s money. His portion of it was given to him with the stipulation that he never go back to Georgia - which was fine by him - but it was still enough to afford the flat and the old restaurant turned private culinary school beneath. He tried to balance that karma by having special cooking lessons like today’s. It was one not on the schedule for others and spread by word of mouth between equally discreet individuals, but it was held as regularly as possible.  


So he had no idea how the man had found out, but here he was. Mr. Fell was part of the community, Charlie felt, but he wasn’t sure how the women he taught would take his presence. There were a lot of gay men that were disdainful of women like them, and Charlie would hate to find out if Mr. Fell was one of those.  


He was just so dang cheerful. It was hard to imagine he’d be that kind of cruel, but Charlie took his duties seriously.  


“Good evening, Mr. Fell,” he greeted him at the front door. “And Mr. Crowley. Are you two joining us today?”  


“I’m not,” said Mr. Crowley, stalking inside. He shook off the day’s rain in a single shudder. The way he stuck out his elbows suggested a disgruntled cat, still deciding if it should share its misery with a swipe.  


“Feel free to ignore him,” said Mr. Fell, already taking off his pale coat. He folded it over his arm with a fond pat. “He’s grumpy today.”  


Only today? Charlie did not ask. He had to dither a moment instead.  


“If you’d both like to let your coats dry,” he said, reaching a course of action, “Please hang them on the pegboard over there. If you’ll excuse me a moment.”  


He left for the kitchen before either could reply to the oddly short greeting. The five women he was cooking with today looked up in askance. They had heard talk in the dining area.  


“Rose,” said Charlie, beckoning for her ear. Rose was one of his oldest students, in that she had been at his special lessons since he started them. She had only been eighteen at the time. Even though he felt weirdly paternal to her on occasion - maternal might be more accurate, as he never had a good experience with paternal - he could trust her input.  


He whispered, “Could you take a look at these two folks and see if they’re familiar?”  


“Two _folks_?” she questioned at the same volume.  


“I think they’re family, but…” He shrugged.  


“What, they look like pigs?” asked Rebecca, red painted lips pressed with early disdain. She was a newer student and still gun-shy, for which Charlie couldn’t blame her.  


“Oh, hell no, they’re nothing like that,” he refuted as Rose peered around the door. He hadn’t liked police back home and he didn’t like them here; he had learned early on how to spot them, just in case. “They’re good people. Well. Decent people. One of them’s a bit grumpy.”  


“Mr. Fell!” exclaimed Rose, rushing out of the kitchen.  


“Rose, dear, how lovely to see you!” he said in turn, just as excited.  


It turned out that Mr. Fell worked in Soho. So did a lot of the women, though not at a bookshop, as he apparently did. Charlie should have known he was a bookish type. Despite living here for a few years, he still wasn’t sure what was typical for the country or plain eccentricity, but the vests and bow-ties might have been a clue for the latter.  


And if he had known Mr. Fell was a Soho native, that might have helped even more. But every day was a chance to learn something new and all. He had to be happy with that.  


Today's lesson was tamales, which Charlie had chosen specifically to appeal to his students’ skill. It had the benefit of being a dish more fun to make with others and simple enough to expand into larger quantities. Some of the women hadn't cooked at all before coming here; most had been actively discouraged from ever pursuing such a “girly” activity. This was the first time they had been allowed to learn how to take care of themselves in such a way.  


Charlie did not entertain the nonsense of cooking being a limited activity. He liked it for a _reason_ , damn it.  


Having Mr. Fell and Mr. Crowley there put an odd spin on what was usually a pleasantly social event. They were courteous and took introductions well, but the other students were wary. It took a lot of silent communication between Rose and the others to convince them it was okay.  


It helped immensely that, when Grenadine’s hair kept getting in her eyes, Mr. Crowley pulled a hair tie out of his pocket and silently gave it to her, waving off her thanks. A fellow who kept spare hair ties on him when his own wasn’t that long could be nominally trusted.  


Trusted by some, anyway.  


“Aren’t you going to do anything?” Rebecca asked Mr. Crowley as Charlie instructed them all through preparing the pork filling. They would prep it and set it aside in the fridge to cool before starting on the rest of the tamale fixings. Mr. Crowley was noticeably not helping, instead choosing to peer with a wrinkled nose at Mr. Fell’s efforts.  


“I _am_ doing something,” he answered Rebecca. “I’m watching him.”  


Grenadine and Opal, who were as close to being sisters as made never no mind, looked at each other with trembling straight faces. They were newer and willing to accept the change in routine, but Charlie suspected them of finding this more amusing than they should.  


“So you’re a voyeur, then?” Rebecca challenged, ignoring Rose’s tug on her sleeve. Charlie tried to catch her eye. She ignored him as well, taking advantage of his dislike of embarrassing students. He was going to have to toughen up one of these days.  


“What the h- the de- a what?” Mr. Crowley garbled, face screwed up in confusion.  


“Oh, we haven’t been sightseeing in ages,” said Mr. Fell absently over his friend, shaking out his hands over his bowl of masa dough. “When does it stop sticking?”  


“When it’s ready, he said,” answered Mr. Crowley, jerking a thumb at Charlie. “Weren’t you listening?”  


“I’ve been mixing it for _ages_ , it ought to be done by now!”  


“It takes time,” said Heaven, eyes down as she mixed her own small bowl of masa. “Anything worth doing is worth the time doing it.”  


“Well said, honey.” Charlie winked at her. She smiled back, allowing her teeth to peep through with amusement. In the first couple months of attending these sessions, she had burned nearly everything she tried through impatience before getting the hang of it.  


“I still think it should be ready,” said Mr. Fell, trying to pry his fingers apart. They were covered thickly with the corn flour and lard mixture in a manner that was disconcertingly concrete.  


“Not _yet_ , he said. Honestly, for someone so determined to learn this nonsense, you’re rather terrible at paying attention,” snapped Mr. Crowley.  


“Hey now, that is _enough_ ,” said Charlie, stopping in front of their station.  


The women quieted and stared at him. He didn’t think he had said it _that_ loud.  


“Mr. Crowley, I request that you come along with me to get all the husks,” said Charlie rapidly, struggling to keep his natural manner of speech from bleeding through. “So’s we can have ourselves an understanding.”  


Well. There went that idea.  


He marched off to the big sink, where a pot of hot but not boiling water held all the soaking corn husks that they would use for the tamales. His face felt uncomfortably warm. He hated to raise his voice.  


Mr. Crowley, surprisingly, followed him.  


“What you want, then?” he grumbled, shoulders up near his ears again. It seemed to be a preemptive defense against suspected trouble, which Charlie didn’t like. Or rather, he amended silently, he didn’t like that _he_ had made Mr. Crowley feel this way. He had come so far from bad troubles. It would be just the worst kind of luck if he brought more down on himself.  


“I’m sorry,” Charlie said, swirling a hand in the soaking water and pulling out cleaned husks. “I shouldn’t have raised my voice at you. It was unnecessary.”  


Mr. Crowley frowned. He seemed to be always frowning, but they had subtle variations in them. Charlie couldn’t parse this one.  


“What’re you apologizing for? That was barely anything.”  


“It was unnecessary,” he repeated. “But, Mr. Crowley, you aren’t my student. You have no desire to learn what I teach. Even so, I request that you allow those with the desire to learn actually do so. Is that agreeable?”  


The man’s face moved in a way that might have been squinting, if not for the large round sunglasses in the way. Where had he even bought them?  


“I liked it better when you talk natural,” he said, stuffing his hands in his pockets.  


Charlie finished collecting the husks, gathering in a woven flat basket. They still had to be trimmed. He would probably have to help Mr. Fell with his. At least he could trust his regular students to be advanced enough to take oral instruction.  


“That would be the first time I’ve heard that,” he said, not quite cross. “So, will you leave him alone?”  


Mr. Crowley looked across the room to Mr. Fell. Charlie followed his gaze.  


As advised, Mr. Fell was attempting to test if his masa was ready by smacking it. He managed to upend the entire bowl and, in a frantic grab to pick it back up, spread the still-sticky dough across the counter and a little bit onto the floor. Rose and Rebecca jumped to help, possibly only to keep their own work stations from being contaminated, but Mr. Fell thanked them profusely all the same.  


He also had a streak of red and green chili sauce down his face, dangerously close to his eyes. That hadn’t been there when Charlie had walked away just a moment ago.  


“I’ll do my best,” he said gravely.  


“He’ll get there, Mr. Crowley.”  


“It’s just Crowley,” he corrected.  


“As a first name?”  


“Might as well be. Chose it myself, a long time ago.” He stalked back to his friend, snagging a dishcloth along the way. He stilled Mr. Fell with a touch on the shoulder and cleaned the chili sauce from his face, accepting his relieved thanks with a softer frown and a grumble of welcome.  


Charlie made a mental note to invite them both to further private-private lessons. He had started these specifically to help out the women he knew, but maybe they all could get Crowley in touch with other men like himself. Opal would definitely know where to go. She had a hand in the local youth groups and had an intimate understanding of how important it was to have friends of similar situations.  


He went back to the students and helped Mr. Fell salvage his masa.  


From there, making the tamales went easily. Mostly. With only a few mishaps. Because of how they needed to cook, Charlie put out one of his biggest pots on the stove and gathered everyone close to watch as he prepped it. He lined it with the scraps of trimmed husks, put a ball of aluminium foil in the center for a prop, and had everyone bring over their own tamales. They were propped with the open end upwards around the ball and further, until they filled the pot. Heaven poured in the chicken stock needed for steaming; Rebecca turned up the heat and settled the lid.  


Somehow, Mr. Fell’s attempt didn’t taste worse than previous ones, but it did feel worse.  


It had been Rose’s idea to mark their different tamales with little dots of food colouring on the corn husks, so that it was easy to see who had made which ones. Mr. Fell had asked for blue; it was different enough from the others that Charlie had no issue saving it for the last taste test. His tongue didn’t thank him, but he had his duty.  


“Just a tad dry,” he said, setting down the fork. “Not enough of the lard and broth was incorporated into the flour before assembly. ”  


“I tasted it this time,” said Mr. Fell, folding his apron and setting it far away from the burner. “At all of the stages! How am I to determine how it should _feel_?”  


Charlie hesitated.  


“Well, through practice,” he said. It felt insufficient, but it was the only way he knew of getting the feel of something right in the hands.  


Mr. Fell's face fell.  


“You'll get there,” Rose assured him, patting his shoulder. “It took us ages before we were even close to okay, and you've just started!”  


“I just thought it would be easier,” he said, rolling down his sleeves so that the French cuffs could be fastened. “What's to cooking but putting a few things together with heat?”  


“Puts all those lunches in a new perspective, doesn't it,” muttered Crowley, opening a tamale with all the delicacy of a newly coated surgeon. The masa stuck in places and crumbled away in others. Everyone else's had cooked fine in the big pot. Charlie honestly did not understand why Mr. Fell's had been different.  


At least he wasn't being disparaging right now, but instead hummed sympathetically at Mr. Fell's worries.  


It was hard to tell if the two were actually together. Charlie couldn't imagine getting his boyfriend to join him in something he firmly didn't want to do. He would have complained the entire time and then get upset when Charlie wanted to leave.  


“Let's take our meal to the dining area,” Charlie said to the room, casting aside his woolgathering. He got dishes down, handed them to Grenadine to pass out, and went for the silverware.  


He had made enough tamales that someone could take them home, if they wanted. He watched them disappear between Mr. Fell and Crowley and thought he might start just making a lot of everything.

*******

Mr. Fell never seemed to have a set schedule for showing up, but he always arrived before the lesson started, Crowley at his elbow like a particularly sharp edged bird with ruffled feathers. It didn't seem like he was avoiding certain food types like some of Charlie's less adventurous students did. It was as though he was there on a whim, every time, though indulging whims shouldn't result in so much turmoil.  


While preparing new potatoes for roasting, Mr. Fell managed to finally cut his hand instead of the potatoes. Crowley tugged him over to the sink as the other students exclaimed, but when Charlie rushed over with the first aid kit, he was fine.  


“Just a scratch, really,” said Mr. Fell, beaming in a way that was more manic than reassuring as Crowley checked his hand with pinched determination. “It didn't even bleed! There's no need to be concerned. I'm quite fine, Mr. Friend.”  


Charlie didn't like it, but his hand really wasn't bleeding. He made him wash his knife and the potatoes anyway. It was good hygiene practice, another important rule of cooking.  


Mr. Fell never got the dough right. Mr. Fell often fumbled ingredients and had to start over. Mr. Fell somehow constantly messed up temperatures, resulting in food that wasn't safe to eat or burned so badly that there was no way any bacteria could have survived, but neither would your stomach if you ate it.  


It was getting to a point that Charlie was seriously doubting his abilities to teach. Sure, _anyone_ can cook, but could _this_ one?  


On pierogi day, Charlie caught himself thinking that maybe it would be better to gently encourage Mr. Fell in another direction.  


That was unacceptable. That was close to giving up on him. And Charlie would not have it.  


But how should be inspire the man?  


“Mr. Fell,” he said as he plated his own pierogis with the detached skill of years, “may I ask, why do you want to learn all this?”  


Mr. Fell tipped his head to the side as he thought. He had already pulled on his jacket-coat, as he always did before the students went to the dining room. It made him look older in an odd way.  


Not like he was old-fashioned, but fashioned precisely how he wanted to be.  


“I've been enjoying the skill of others for years beyond years,” he said. Charlie mentally upped his assessment of his age. “And it doesn't seem right to call myself a 'gourmand’ without understanding what work goes into the dish. It seemed best to broaden my horizons, as it were.”  


“Admirable,” muttered Charlie, picking up another plate. He had met a number of individuals that wouldn't have come to that conclusion, all of them while he was still in the restaurant biz. If he was lucky, he would never meet them again.  


“Why do you ask, Mr. Friend?” Mr. Fell asked, suspiciously gentle.  


Charlie paused in his work, feeling like his earlier despairing thoughts were on display. He looked across the room, where Crowley was speaking to a newer student that had seemed snotty, but he was trying to give her the benefit of the doubt. Crowley had his sharp smile on again. That usually meant he was being obnoxious, but could be deterred by interference from Mr. Fell.  


He still didn’t know if they were actually together, for all that the two were part of the community.  


They moved in orbit, rarely touching, but hardly far apart.  


“Maybe it would go better if you're not thinking of what you would like to make for yourself, but rather, for someone else,” he suggested, looking up at Mr. Fell.  


Who glanced the across the room as well, catching Crowley's darkly shaded eye. He squinted. Crowley stuck out his tongue in challenge. The two had a conversation in twitches of facial muscles and wagged fingers. It wasn't sign language, but the familiarity of years.  


“I could try that, yes,” said Mr. Fell to Charlie as though he hadn't just silently scolded his friend from across the room. He seemed thoughtful.  


The next few lessons with them were better. Mr. Fell still fumbled, but he asked Crowley for his opinions on flavour and progress. Charlie was amused to see that, despite scoffing at the notion of learning any of this 'nonsense’, Crowley was giving good answers. And helping minutely. And making sure Mr. Fell didn't lose any fingers to his own knife.  


Charlie woke up at night, worrying about that knife. His latest bad dream had also woken up his boyfriend, who was not amused. It took him a while to get back to sleep after that with a new upset on the mind, but he was used to worse.  


Then one day, Charlie realized that it had been weeks since Mr. Fell and Crowley had attended at all.  


He only noticed when Heaven had asked after them at one of the private-private sessions. They were making cinnamon rolls that day, a sort of comfort food that the English didn't seem to appreciate.  


The question brought him up short, brown sugar gritty on his fingers.  


“I don't know,” he answered her. “They haven't been by in a while.”  


“That's a shame,” tutted Opal. She had been discreetly dropping hints to Crowley about community gatherings, but so far, he wasn't picking them up. She was beginning to wonder if she should be more obvious.  


“Yeah, Ezra definitely makes me feel better for how I'm doing,” said Grenadine. She was rolling out her dough with confidence, getting it so close to rectangular, it could have been done with a ruler.  


“Ezra?”  


“Mr. Fell. 'Ezra Fell’. I heard the boyfriend say it once.”  


“I don't think they're actually dating,” he said, but absently. Charlie, in addition to being disturbed by realizing the absence, was now shocked to realize he had never heard Mr. Fell's first name. It didn't sound quite right somehow.  


She shrugged. “How am I to know?”  


“I thought you English didn't like using first names, anyway,” he teased her, putting his worries on a back-burner. They were grown men and Crowley, at the very least, seemed like the sort more than willing to have a row if someone were giving them trouble.  


“I thought you Americans didn't like keeping the volume down for once,” she teased back.  


“Oh, I'm being loud right now. Is this not loud?” he said, falsely meek.  


The women laughed at him, which was alright. This was their time more than anything.  


But the worry persisted. Mr. Fell lived and was known in Soho. Surely someone would notice if something had happened to him? Crowley would, definitely. If they didn't already live together.  


Another week passed without any showing from the two eccentric men. Other things got in the way of Charlie's worry. His boyfriend was growing increasingly sullen. There was odd weather in the UK, and the world as a whole. The news reported the rising of a landmass out in the ocean, which they were calling Atlantis, but that didn't make sense. Atlantis wasn't real, and neither was a Kraken or fish falling from the sky or UFOs, but the news reported on all of them as though they were.  


Then there was a storm like a hurricane over London. Charlie remembered hurricanes, and this definitely was one. He cursed that his flat/apartment didn't have hurricane proofing, even though that there was no need for such a thing ever, and kept checking on his neighbors. They assured him that all things passed and it was just a spot of weather. Charlie, privately, disagreed. This wasn't right. Every cell in his body was determined to make it known that _they didn't like this a'tall_.  


But it did pass. And a new day started, different from how it had always been.  


Charlie woke on Sunday - the newspaper said it was Sunday, as did the news on his little radio - in a quiet way he hadn't had in a while.  


He got up and started breakfast. The boyfriend woke up around the time it was ready. They sat down together and had a talk.  


It was a hard talk, but it left him with a sense of lightness that he had been missing. And once the ex-boyfriend had collected his few things and gone back to his own place, Charlie went down to his kitchen and let that lightness take him through caring for home.

*******

Mr. Fell and Crowley showed up for a baking lesson a few days later, trailing in with the other students. Both shed their jackets and washed their hands at the small sink; Mr. Fell with sleeves neatly rolled, Crowley with his pushed up somewhere around the elbow and sure to fall.  


Even so, he hung back as Mr. Fell took his place beside his section of counter.  


“It's good to see you again, sirs,” Charlie said to them both, stopping beside them. His mouth was smiling without direction, speaking from the heart. That had been easier lately, in an inexplicable way that he didn't want to look at too closely.  


“And you as well, Mr. Friend,” said Mr. Fell, eyes crinkling with the force of his grin. He was tying his apron in place. Crowley was studiously ignoring the one left out for him. “I've so missed these sessions. They're rather relaxing.”  


Mr. Caldwell, nearby, coughed into his shoulder. It sounded a little like a laugh.  


“Today should be fun, then,” said Charlie, choosing not to comment on how the sessions with Mr. Fell inevitably were more stressful. “We're making cupcakes. You'll have your choice of flavors, or you can do a couple of each, if'n you like.”  


Mr. Fell brightened with ideas. Crowley slumped, but straightened immediately to deter him.  


“If I'm helping, you get to choose _one_ ,” he warned, tossing the ignored apron over his shoulder. Charlie started to scold, but the apron landed perfectly in the laundry bin.  


“But I should think, in the spirit of things-”  


“ _One_ , angel. Prove to me that you can do one right, first,” he said, holding his index finger in the air like a weather-vane for determination. “Don't be tempted to take on more than you can handle.”  


Mr. Fell pursed his lips with a thought. A cheeky grin replaced it.  


“Shouldn't you be the one who encourages such temptation?” he muttered, looking up at him through his lashes. Crowley turned a slow and sincere red.  


Charlie felt suddenly superfluous. He went around to make sure the other students had everything they needed before they started.  


Crowley participated this time. It wasn't much, based on what others were doing, but it was certainly more than he had done in the past. And with his help, Mr. Fell was less likely to set anything on fire. Again.  


It may have been just an excuse to touch. A word was just as effective when it came to stopping someone from using the wrong measurement for their vanilla extract, but Crowley favored the exchanging of tools with overlong lingering touches. He never looked directly at him when he did so, but he also never missed a pass.  


Mr. Fell, for his part, seemed to appreciate every gesture.  


The cupcakes came out lopsided and a little overdone on top, but nothing else about them rang the warning bells of Charlie's senses.  


“These are… good,” he said. It was a surprise, and he shouldn't have let it sound like a surprise, but he had been ready to struggle through the taste test with encouraging words for the other side.  


Mr. Fell smiled, modestly lowering his eyes.  


Crowley broke off a piece of the sacrificial test cupcake and popped it in his mouth.  


His eyebrows rose.  


“He's not wrong,” he said.  


As far as praise went, it seemed lacking, but Mr. Fell's expression was so close to beatific that it should have been painted and hung in a church. One of the Catholic ones that Charlie's grandmother always warned him about. They appreciated beauty in those places, at the very least.  


It could only be matched by the adoration of Crowley. The intensity of it burned, even from behind his sunglasses and with cupcake crumbs on his chin.  


“We still have to make the frosting, which will give all our cupcakes time to cool,” said Charlie, turning to the class to give himself breathing room. Some of them were regulars and looked stunned at the conclusion of Mr. Fell's test. Mr. Caldwell looked ready to cry with misplaced pride. “Now, if you're ready…”  


Baking days were a little different from the other sessions. They tended to be sillier, for one, and accompanied by tea or coffee as much as the actual baked treats. Charlie had two electric kettles just to make sure there was enough hot water. They never took long to heat, but it wasn't pleasant to run out at the critical moment anyway. He couldn't stand that much English disapproval.  


Mr. Fell surprised him again by taking the initiative to make tea for everyone. He did it perfectly.  


“So, what did you think?” Charlie asked him quietly once they were all in the dining area. There was no way that everyone would eat the dozen cupcakes each they had made, but there was time for a sit down and chat before leaving.  


“Of what, Mr. Friend?”  


“How did it feel to cook today?” he elaborated. “Was it understandable, did it 'click’, did you… did you find someone worth cooking for?”  


He really wanted to know if the two were officially together now, but that seemed tacky to say out loud.  


Contemplative, Mr. Fell looked down at his plate. He still had half a cupcake left, even though it was his own creation this afternoon. He liked to take his time. Crowley, as usual, had scarfed his as soon as possible and sat drinking his third cup of coffee. Their gazes met and stars moved.  


Carefully nonchalant, Crowley set his free hand on the table, palm up.  


Mr. Fell clasped it as easily as breathing.  


“A few things are clicking, as you say,” said Mr. Fell, not looking at his steadily reddening companion hiding behind the rim of his own cup. “This cooking business is far more complicated that initially thought, but it's…”  


“Fun,” mumbled Crowley, still red.  


“Yes, thank you, my dear. It's fun.”  


“I'm glad to hear it,” said Charlie. He let himself a bit of cat's pleasure, but just a bit. It wasn't good to be smug about it. “Would you like to take these home?”  


Charlie saw them off. They walked along to where Crowley had parked his weird old car, each carrying a cardboard box of cupcakes, their free hands held with the familiarity of countless years that knew each day was something brand new.

**Author's Note:**

> The recipes mentioned are basically things I make, except for the [tamales](https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/pork-tamales-rojas), as I've never actually made them myself and had to find a recipe to be certain of the process.
> 
> Edit 7/18: So, I found out that apparently, Aziraphale's actor had a bit of cooking trouble on a cooking show, so I've made a tiny addition to this story. For fun. And because it's hilarious.


End file.
